Microsoft Preps New Modeling Language

The software maker puts the "D" in declarative programming as a key part of its larger Oslo model-driven development strategy.

REDMOND,
Wash.-Microsoft,
which in October officially announced its intent to support model-driven
development in a broad strategy known as "
Oslo,"
is beginning work on a new declarative programming language, a supporting
editing tool and other components of the initiative, according to sources close
to the company.

Microsoft announced
Oslo as part
of an amorphous vision for simplifying application development, design,
management and deployment. Company officials said
Oslo
will represent a core set of technology investments that will encompass both a
services infrastructure-spanning server, client and the Internet "cloud"-and an
executable modeling platform that will include a general-purpose modeling
language, tools and repository.

However, the sources said that at the heart of the
Oslo
initiative lies a new declarative programming language currently known simply
as "D." If, as the code name implies,
Oslo
were a city, D would be the key to
Oslo.

According to the sources, D is a new language under development at Microsoft
aimed at building applications and components for the
Oslo
repository. However, D is but one piece of a much larger puzzle that will
include graphical modeling tools and other components. D is expected to be a
textual modeling language suitable for use by business professionals and domain
experts.

Accenting D will be a new editing tool known as "Intellipad."
Intellipad will serve as a text editor for the D language and will further
support the development of applications and other content for the
Oslo
repository.

Although Intellipad is targeted primarily for use with D, it will be capable
of supporting other declarative languages, sources said. It is being designed
to be both customizable and suitable for scripting. The technology also is
known inside Microsoft as "Emacs.Net," as homage to the Emacs text
editor made popular in the Unix environment.

In a talk at the Lang.
NET conference on
the Microsoft campus here Jan. 30, Don Box, an architect in Microsoft's
Connected Systems Division, said that Microsoft engineers "care deeply about
having natural ways to write things down in a text file that are not only
natural to write, but more importantly, natural to read."

The Connected Systems Division is working on D and Intellipad, sources said.
However, other groups within Microsoft, including the Developer Division, are
working on different components of the
Oslo
strategy.
When some Microsoft bloggers began referring to an Emacs.Net effort late
last year and in the early days of 2008, Burley Kawasaki, director of product
management in Microsoft's Connected Systems Division, issued a statement on the
issue.

"The recent reference to a possible 'Emacs.net' like environment is
referring to some of the R&D efforts we're exploring that would help enable
model-driven development to enter mainstream use by the developer community,"
Kawasaki
said. "While it's too soon to announce any specifics in terms of product
offerings, this generally referred to some of the early thinking we're doing
around
Oslo's modeling platform
currently in development at Microsoft, specifically focused on how developers
will want to edit and create declarative models."

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.